I’m still unreasonably upset that Hester isn’t in already.

Londoner here, and it was nuts. Stories about the book, leaks about the story, stories about leaks about the story… these were in mainstream newspapers, often on the front page. It was a near-universal fandom.

It wasn’t just ‘stay up all night at bookshops’ or ‘every kid in costume’ things - it was super mainstream. Everyone was into it. You’d see people on the underground, everyone carrying copies of the books, etc.

When Goblet of Fire came out, there were queues around the local Sainsburys to get copies. A lot of my - also adult - workmates would also bring their books into work, and we would sneak away for ‘meetings’ where we’d speed-read as rapidly as possible for an hour. It was amazing.

Sadly, I don’t see that every happening again. Amongst other things: Amazon kind of killed it. The queues to get copies, the piles of books: these were not only ‘bonding’ activities, but they reinforced how BIG the phenom was. If anything ever happened like this again, it would involve a lot of cardboard boxes in the post, people privately reading, and then sharing on TikTok. Which obviously works, but even the upper limits of BookTok are still a long, long way from Pottermania.

There are other factors as well. Not to be an old dude, but the world is a lot more cynical now, and we’re much crankier and more fragmented about our culture. It would be hard for any media property to achieve what Potter did when it came to being a breakthrough, universal obsession - much less another book.

Even, say, the heights of Game of Thrones or the MCU didn’t quite do it - and those have the advantage of much more money behind them. Or look at, say, the infinite wealth and retail power of Amazon, and how much they spaffed on Rings of Power. That achieved maybe 1/1000th of a Pottermania. (It also wasn’t as good, but still, it shows how hard it is manufacture this kind of fandom, even with platforms that big.)

It is sad, as - again, with rose-tinted glasses - I liked how Potter connected so many people. It felt like we were all enjoying the same thing, and you could talk about it with anyone. The world could use that again. (He says, sounding a lot like a shit Hallmark card.)

I dunno, I’m more and more thinking that a good team is one that successfully beats the teams it should beat, and doesn’t randomly crap the bed at times.

Given the relative parity of the league, a team consistently winning teams against “bad” teams is still plenty impressive.

My theory as well. They figured on this being a lost season - might as well prep for next year, get a draft pick, be ready for Rodgers’ return.

Then they started being competitive and that really ruined that plan…

The only one that’s wide open to me is coach.

Campbell is awesome and I love him and he is ‘coach I would most like to hang out with’, but… I dunno. I really like the Lions and the underdog-to-winner narrative is strong here. He’s definitely my front-runner, but I don’t see it as a lock by any means.

Saleh feels like a strong dark horse here. Reshaped the entire roster around one dude, and then that dude only made it 4 snaps into the season. Yet still finding a way to always be competitive and sometimes win. Sticking with Zach Wilson feels like a boneheaded move that will count against him, but how much of that is his fault? It would’ve been really easy to bin this season, but they’re playing hard every game.

Tomlin isn’t even on the list but, as above. Somehow doing very well and is very competitive, and is doing it with a bucket of broken toys. That’s amazing.

McDaniel, Pederson, and Harbaugh have really good rosters and were expected to do well. Not to be a homer, but why would any of them have a more compelling story than Andy Reid or Nick Sirianni? They’re all very good and their teams are doing well, but… did anyone expect otherwise?